There are quite a lot of samba documentaries out there, several of which focus entirely on one particular singer or another but the best ones, in my mind, are those that look at the genre as a whole – Mistério do Samba being one of them. Below, I will post some of the perhaps lesser known films (all of them in Portuguese only).

If anyone starts to get confused and require a timeline of how all these people, styles and influences come together, click “Iniciar” on this interactive infographic and play around.

Probably the best samba documentary out there, the 2010 film “As batidas do Samba” interviews many of the ‘second wave’ samba greats, who worked with the first wave singers and composers. It focuses quite a bit on the history of the genre and instrumentation.

Simply titled “Samba”, this film from the year 2000 centers on Mangueira yet it…